


You Put Color in My Life

by hybridempress



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Soulmate AU, Soulmate AU-Color blindness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:31:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7513547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hybridempress/pseuds/hybridempress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Francis feels as though everything he creates is dull and boring because he can't see color, but Antonio seeks to prove that you don't have to see color to be able to utilize it for fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Put Color in My Life

**Author's Note:**

> Fic number 6 for aph france week. I didn't have time to upload this yesterday and I don't think I'll be able to get a seventh fic done after all, ahh. Still, I'm pretty proud of this little thing. Soulmate AU where you can't see color until you meet your soulmate, but with a little twist

A loud sigh escaped Francis’ lips as he balled up the sketch that he had just finished and threw it at the wall across from the couch, frustrated. He ran his hands through his hair until he reached the ends and pulled on them tightly. He propped his elbows up on his knees and buried his face in his hands.

Antonio frowned, furrowing his brows. “What was wrong with that one? I thought it looked great,” he said.

“No. It’s boring, and colorless. Just like everything else I create,” Francis murmured. 

This time, it was Antonio who sighed. “Francis, come on… Just because it’s colorless doesn’t mean it’s bad. How would you even know? You’ve never seen color. Maybe color is terrible. Maybe all your art would look like shit with color. How would you know?” he asked. 

Francis sat back against the couch and folded his arms behind his head. There was a faint smile on his lips. He hummed softly. 

“If color wasn’t so great then how come everyone is trying so desperately to find it? How come there are stories in the news and in books and on TV every day about how drastically people’s lives change when they can finally see color? Or about how people die without seeing color and it’s the most devastating, tragic thing in the world? We have to be missing out on something, Tonio,” he said.

“Maybe they’re just happy because they finally found their soulmate. Maybe it’s tragic because they never found true love. How do we know that color has anything to do with it?” Antonio asked. 

“How do we know love has anything to do with it?” Francis countered. 

Antonio rolled his eyes. “You’re so stubborn, Francis. If you’d stop thinking about what you don’t have, you’d realize everything you draw is a lot better than you think it is,” he said.

Francis sighed again, softer this time. “I just wish I could paint, or see the color in those colored pencils that I bought, or something! I just wish I could see it. Everything is so dull. I just want some color in my life,” he said. 

Antonio stood up from the couch, placing his hands on his hips and glaring down at Francis. “Fuck color! Come on, man, you can paint without color,” he said. 

Francis looked up at him, raising an eyebrow. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I said you can paint without color. Same as you can draw without color. Doesn’t matter,” Antonio said. 

“But how? If you can’t see color, then how do you know if what you’re painting looks good or not?” Francis asked.

“It doesn’t have to look good if it’s abstract,” Antonio said. He offered a hand to Francis, tilting his head in invitation for Francis to take it. “Come on, I’ll show you.” 

Francis stared at Antonio for a moment before taking his hand. Antonio squeezed Francis’ hand tightly and pulled him up from the couch. Antonio didn’t let go of Francis’ hand once Francis was on his feet. Instead, he pulled Francis to the front door of the apartment, opened the door, and pulled Francis out into the hall. 

\---

“Where are we going, Tonio?” Francis asked, sitting in the passenger seat of Antonio’s car.

“To my place,” Antonio replied, turning onto the back road that provided the fastest route to his apartment. 

“Why?” Francis asked.

“To pick some things up,” Antonio said.

“What are we doing with those things?” Francis asked.

“It’s a surprise,” Antonio purred. 

The rest of the car ride was mostly silent, save for the quiet drone of the radio, which was only turned up enough for Francis and Antonio to hear like a whisper. Antonio dragged Francis inside the apartment as quickly as he could when they arrived. He told Francis to stay in the living room while he gathered the things that they would need. 

Antonio disappeared into his room. When he came back out, Francis saw that he had changed from the pants that he had been wearing earlier to a pair of jean short-shorts that were a bit tattered at the cuffs. Draped over his shoulder was a pair of sports shorts. He pulled them off of his shoulder and tossed them to Francis.

“Here, go get changed,” he said. “They’re pretty loose in the legs and the waistband is elastic so they should fit you.”

Francis raised an eyebrow. His thighs were a lot thicker than Antonio’s were, as were his hips, so he and Antonio definitely were not the same size. However, Francis was far from skeptical that these loose shorts would fit him, albeit a little snuggly. He was more skeptical about why exactly Antonio wanted him to change in the first place.

Antonio urged him on again. “Come on, Francis! We haven’t got all day!”

Francis complied with a sigh. He stood up from the couch and walked to Antonio’s room to change. As suspected, the shorts were pretty snug on him, but he didn’t mind it. He really just wanted to know why Antonio wanted him to wear them in the first place. 

Francis came out of the bedroom with his hands on his hips and stood in front of Antonio. “There, I changed. Now will you please tell me what kind of crazy scheme you have going here?” he asked. 

Antonio grinned and shook his head. “Nope! You’ll just have to wait and see!” he said.

Francis sighed again. “Fine, let’s just get going then,” he said, pouting. 

Antonio laughed. “Yeah come on, let’s go!”

\---

The drive to Antonio’s “surprise” was half an hour away, but it was far from silent. Francis spent the entire time asking questions and trying to get hints from Antonio, but Antonio wouldn't budge. Even when Antonio had parked outside of a small one-story building, Francis had no idea what Antonio was planning.

There was no name on the building. It looked old and out of use. Francis assumed it was one of those buildings that had been built and never used, or had been abandoned and stripped of whatever identification it had previously held. Francis stared at it in suspicion for a while, and didn't get out of the car until Antonio had. 

Antonio waited for Francis outside the car. He grabbed Francis’ hand when Francis stood beside him and dragged him into the building. The building had one main room in it as far as Francis could see. There was a door to a small office in the back, as well as a bathroom, but that was it. The rest of the building was huge, open, and almost entirely empty.

Cardboard panels covered the entirety of the floor, and even though he couldn’t see the color, Francis could tell that parts of the walls had been painted over several times. There were large stacks of paint cans in each corner of the room. Antonio grinned at Francis once again and started to strip himself of all of his clothes but the shorts.

“Come on, Francis, you gotta strip too! It’s about to get messy in here,” Antonio warned, tossing his discarded clothes towards the entrance of the building before dashing off to one of the corners and grabbing two buckets of paint from one of the stacks. 

Francis watched Antonio as he ran to the corner and grabbed the paint cans. By now he had a little bit better of an idea of what was going on. Antonio wanted Francis to paint without color. Where paint was involved, there would always be a mess. Francis definitely didn’t want to get anything on the shirt he was wearing now, so he did as Antonio said and stripped down to his shorts. He tossed the discarded clothes into the same pile as Antonio’s.

Antonio brought the paint buckets back over to Francis. One of the cans had a paint can opener on top of it already. Antonio set the buckets down and then knelt down beside them. He grabbed the can opener and pried the lids of the cans off quickly. He tossed the lids and the can opener away when he was finished. After that, he stood up and pushed the buckets over onto their sides, then rushed to stand beside Francis again. 

The paint spilled out over the cardboard. Antonio and Francis stood still as the waves of cold, thick liquid engulfed their feet and kept spreading across the cardboard covering on the floor. Antonio bent down and sunk his hands into the paint. He stepped out of the paint and walked until he was close enough to reach one of the walls in the studio. He dragged his hands across the wall, creating an arch from the paint on his palms. 

Francis watched the ground as Antonio walked, following the footsteps that painted the cardboard. When Antonio started to paint the wall, Francis finally bent down to stick his hands in the paint and follow Antonio’s lead. He walked to the same wall, letting his footsteps lay beside Antonio’s. He painted abstract shapes underneath Antonio’s arch. 

Antonio smiled broadly at him. “See, I told you that you could paint without color,” he said.

Francis stepped back from the wall and looked at Antonio. “How did you know about this place? And how did all of this stuff get here?” he asked. 

“Lovino and Feliciano bought out this studio together so they could paint together someplace quiet and with a lot of space. Sometimes they bring props in here and there are paintbrushes and easels and things in the office, but sometimes Lovi comes down here just to spill buckets of paint on the floor and get some stress relief by painting the walls. I was feeling pretty fed up one day so he took me down here to show me how to do it and said I could use the place whenever I needed it. And I figured that you would probably need it today, so… Here we are,” Antonio explained. 

Francis smiled faintly. “It works for you even if you can’t really see what you’re doing?” he asked.

Antonio nodded, shrugging a little. “I mean, yeah. Even if I can’t see the color the texture of the paint is still nice, and knocking paint cans over is nice, and sometimes it’s just nice to be in here alone with something to keep your hands busy, you know?” he said.

Francis laughed softly. “You might have to convince Lovino to let me use this place more often,” he said.

Antonio’s expression softened. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind it if I asked him nicely.”

They took trips back and forth between the paint on the floor and the wall where they painted without direction. As most of the paint came off on the wall and the rest of it dried to their hands they made a game out of racing back and forth to get more paint and decorate the walls with it. Occasionally their hands brushed against each other, or they clipped each other’s heels as they ran. They passed each other cocky smirks as vibrant laughter filled the studio, reverberating off of its walls. 

Francis tripped Antonio on a race back to the wall. It had been an accident, but Antonio stumbled and fell hard, face-first on the ground. Francis stopped running and turned around to look at Antonio with a worried look on his face. “Tonio, are you okay?” 

Antonio smirked and reached out to grab Francis’ ankle. Francis barely had time to shriek before Antonio pulled him to the ground. He landed with a thud on his back, almost having the wind knocked out of him. 

Antonio scrambled to his knees and crawled over Francis. He knelt with his knees on either side of Francis’ hips and shook his hands out over Francis’ chest, getting splotches of paint all over it. Francis shrieked again, covering his face with his arms to try and shield himself from the paint. When Antonio was finished, he stood up and ran back to the paint to dip his hands in it again. 

Francis stood up and rushed after Antonio. He grabbed Antonio’s wrist and pulled him away from the paint. He dragged his hands up and down Antonio’s arm, covering it from shoulder to fingertips in paint. Antonio laughed, trying as hard as he could to pull away from Francis.

Antonio managed to finally break free of Francis’ grip, but the recoil was enough to send them both tumbling down into the paint. Backs, legs, and asses were covered in paint. The laughter between the two was uncontrollable. From there, all hell broke loose. 

Francis and Antonio tried frantically to shield themselves and to stand up and get away from the paint while simultaneously throwing it at each other. The paint was too slippery for either of them to escape from in such a hurry. So far the majority of the paint was being tossed aimlessly across the room instead of hitting the intended targets of each other’s bodies. 

Something changed between them in that moment, as they tossed paint at each other, smiling wider than they had ever smiled before, and laughing harder than they had ever laughed. The change was almost unnoticeable in the moment, hidden behind all of the unbridled happiness that filled the room, but it was there. Antonio found it as soon as he let his arm drop from shielding his face, and he got a good look at Francis again. 

The spots of paint on Francis’ body stood out from everything else in the room. The hue in those splotches was something different from anything that Antonio had seen before. It was dark, and a little murky, but it was still different. Antonio gasped and covered his mouth with his paint-dried hand when the realization hit him that he was seeing color for the first time.

Francis’ smile faded and was replaced with a frown when he heard Antonio gasp. He looked at Antonio’s face, concerned. “Tonio? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” he asked.

Antonio had no words. He had nothing to say. He couldn’t think of anything. All he could do was grab Francis’ hand and press it to his own cheek, waiting until he could feel paint dry onto his skin to pull Francis’ hand away again. Francis was confused until he saw the change in hue of the handprint on Antonio’s cheek, and he finally realized what Antonio had already discovered.

“Oh my God…” he whispered. “Oh my God, Tonio-”

He was cut off by the feeling of Antonio’s hands cupping his cheeks, and of Antonio’s warm lips pressed against his own. There was paint on his cheeks and in his hair. He cupped the back of Antonio’s head and kissed him back deeply. His breath caught in his throat as he tried to hold back tears. 

“I can’t believe it was you all this time… I can’t believe we never realized it until now…” Antonio whispered against Francis lips, not opening his eyes. 

Francis ran his fingers through Antonio’s hair, trying to pull him closer. He laughed softly. “There’s color in my life now, Tonio… You put color in my life…” he whispered back. 

Antonio kissed Francis’ lips once again before pulling away and letting his eyes open slowly. He was met with an entire world filled overwhelmingly with color, but the most vibrant of all of these new colors was the color of Francis’ eyes, which were staring deeply into his own. Antonio smiled broadly, and laughed again. 

“I think I’ve found my favorite color,” he said, brushing his thumbs underneath Francis’ eyes to brush away the small tears that were dripping from them. 

Francis blushed softly, and Antonio could see the tint in his cheeks underneath the paint on his face. Francis hadn’t the faintest idea what color his eyes were, but he was betting they were nowhere near as beautiful as the color of Antonio’s. He cupped Antonio’s face in his hands and rested his forehead against Antonio’s.

“And I think I’ve found mine.”


End file.
